Google has consented to a $391.5 million settlement with 40 states over its use of location tracking, according to Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum.
Even when users thought they had turned off location tracking in their account settings, Google continued to collect information about their whereabouts, according to Oregon's Attorney General's office.
Commencing in 2023, the settlement requires Google to be more transparent with users and provide clearer location-tracking disclosures.
The settlement was led by Rosenblum and Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson. As per the release, it is the largest consumer privacy settlement ever led by a group of attorneys general.
“Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago,” said Google spokesperson José Castañeda in a statement.
The basis of the investigation was revealed in a 2018 Associated Press report.
Rosenblum said in the release, “For years Google has prioritized profit over their users’ privacy. They have been crafty and deceptive. Consumers thought they had turned off their location tracking features on Google, but the company continued to secretly record their movements and use that information for advertisers.”
Google paid $85 million to settle a similar lawsuit with Arizona last month, and the company is facing additional location tracking lawsuits in Washington, D.C., Indiana, Texas, and Washington state. According to the four AGs, Google was using location data for its ad business.
The lawsuits instruct the court to order Google to hand over any algorithms developed with allegedly ill-gotten gains, as well as any monetary profits.
